The Unadventures of Tracie

We’ve been working with Kids on the Move for about a year now. We took Morgan in for a well-baby visit when he was 18ish months old. His pediatrician gave us a questionnaire to fill out, which Morgan “failed.” They recommended we call Kids on the Move, which we did. He got evaluated and qualified for sensory and speech and development services. I blogged about finding out Morgan is a sensory seeker here . For the past year Morgan has had an occupational therapist, a development specialist, and speech therapist each visit us once a month.  Now that Morgan is turning 3, he is aging out of Kids on the Move. So we needed to meet with the school district for a formal assessment. We just did this assessment this week. I’m glad that they prepared us for what to expect and that the environment would be difficult for Morgan. It was a small room (very small) and Morgan was expected to do adult-directed tasks in a very specific way. Morgan is more of an “I’ll do it on my own time, in my...

I don’t blog as much as I used to. (Paging Captain Obvious!) The reasons for this are many. Lack of time. Lack of motivation. Feeling unable to talk about the things that matter to me. Anyway, I’m making a new goal to blog once a month just to chronicle what is happening in our lives. If I don’t write this stuff down, I’ll forget it. So here is the status of the members of the Austin & Tracie family: Austin : still in school. I honestly don’t know when he’ll graduate at this point. I keep having my hopes dashed, so I’m not even going to set a date. It’ll most likely be sometime next year though. This summer he’s taking a computer programming class. For funsies. Hopefully it’ll teach him something. He’s working on a few graphic design side projects and has goals to work on stuff throughout the summer. This summer he’ll be home at 5ish so that will be great to have him home earlier. Tracie : still working. I honestly don’t know when I’ll stop working at this point. This...

I'm so relieved I could almost cry. We've finally (though, in retrospect, we were lucky to find out as soon as we did) figured out why Morgan is the way he is. Morgan is a happy lovable child that we once worried was autistic. After undergoing a few comprehensive evaluations via Kids on the Move, we have learned that Morgan most likely has a Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), specifically he has a Sensory Modulation Disorder (SMD) that exhibits as sensory seeking. I think at this point that's it unlikely he has autism. It's still possible that he could have ADHD because the two disorders have similar symptoms (but different causes). It's also possible he has both since they do sometimes overlap. But for right now (it's too soon to tell precisely since he is very young) I feel fairly certain that Morgan is a Sensory Seeker. Morgan is also pretty behind in his receptive (understanding) and expressive (talking) communication. Though Morgan is almost 24 months, hi...

Well, I would've caught up on blog entries this weekend if Morgan didn't decide it was a great time for him to get sick for the first time. Poor kid. He didn't understand why his tummy hurt and throwing up scared him. It was quite the adventure involving many towels. We're a bit worried about him because it's day 3 and he still hasn't eaten more than a couple of bits of anything. Yesterday he wouldn't eat or drink. Today fortunately he has drank some juice and Pedialyte. Still won't eat anything though. I've tried giving him lots of bland foods and stuff. Won't eat. I really hope he starts eating soon. Though I'm less worried as long as he keeps drinking. So of course I caught the bug from Morgan. I really, really hate vomiting. Of course I don't know anyone who likes it. But I have like an aversion to it, which is bad because it's really hard for me to do it even when I really need to. So now I'm on my second sick day from wo...

I have talked before about my experiences with breastfeeding . Things started getting better around 10 months, which made me happy. I looked forward to nursing Morgan for many more months. But alas, it was not to be. I'm now in a period of mourning. Around 14 months or so, Morgan started losing interest during some of our remaining 2-3 daily nursing sessions. It was not the same as the nursing strike s that he had had at 3 months, 6 months, and 9 months in which Morgan fussed and refused to nurse consistently for a period of a few days before returning with gusto to nursing regularly, as is what normally happens with a nursing strike. It was different. He just didn't seem as interested. I realized that my milk was decreasing as I had stopped pumping and I had stopped talking my lactation supplements. I think he was getting frustrated with how little milk I had left, which just decreased my supply even more. I tried to continue nursing as I realized that I wasn't ready ...

*I wanted to post this when Morgan turned one to mark the reach of my goal but I didn't finish it until now. I have always wanted to breastfeed. I knew that when I had a child it would be something that I would do. Having an unmedicated (aka "natural") childbirth was also something I knew I wanted, for so many reasons. (Post to come on this later.) And I succeeded. Unfortunately, I spent so much time preparing for birth that I forgot to learn about breastfeeding. Ideally you wouldn't need to learn about breastfeeding. You would know how because you've seen others do it. You would've heard other people talk about it. About the challenges and the solutions. And though I've known some women who breastfed, I realized I hadn't really seen how it was done or talked about it with them. I went into it completely naive, which is so against my usual nature of study, search, and prepare. I think I figured it would be easier than I thought. I also did not know...

The votes are in! I will be cutting Morgan's hair soon. I'll do a post when I actually get around to doing it. The votes were evenly divided between trimming, cutting, and waiting. I waited anyway (mostly out of laziness). Only one person thought we should let Morgan grow a mullet. It's starting to head that way, but sorry, we won't be keeping it like that. Stay tuned for pictures and a post on cutting Morgan's hair! Ooo Fun Stuff. My life is so boring. (More exciting...Morgan is almost 1!)

His kissable cheeks (I kiss them hundreds of times a day.) His laugh His cuddly nature When he sucks on my big toe (It makes me laugh.) The way he claps his hands His bedhead hair The way he "talks" with me The way he breathes fast and wheezes slightly when he's excited His smiles: his "Cabbage Patch" smile, his "I love Mom" smile, his "Yay boobies" smile, his "I love food" smile (when I give him something he likes), his "I'm so cute" smile The way he gets all excited when it's time to nurse The way he jumps up and down when he's happy (and holding on to something or in his jumper) The way he quietly whines when he's tired (It sounds like this: ehhh...ehhhh....ehhh) His feet (I love kissing them and biting his toes...maybe that's why he bites mine) The way he overlaps his leg over me when I'm nursing  The way he plays with his toys Also, I'm doing a poll whether or not to cut Mor...

Austin left me 4 1/2 minutes worth of messages on my phone. (13 separate ones.) Reminds me when we were dating, we used to do that for fun. See how many messages we could leave. Sorry for not answering, hon. I never heard my phone ringing. I have no idea how that happened. Morgan loves my cell phone. It's like his Holy Grail. I MUST have that phone. I will leap over tall buildings, crawl over my mom, reach with all my might, risk falling off a bed...until I make it mine! Muhahahahhahah. We have an old cell phone he can play with, and he likes that phone. But mine is the one he covets most. He most wants it when I'm talking on it. Even if I'm not holding it up to my ear and I put it on speaker. He's a funny baby. Morgan also loves remotes and taking DVDs off the shelves. I now have entered the phase known as "my baby destroys my stuff." He got one of my Lois & Clark DVDs out of the case while I was making dinner and rubbed it across the tile floor. Yep...

There's not a whole lot of pictures of Morgan and me. There's a few reasons for this: one, it's usually just me and Morgan at home, two, I hate the way I look right now, and three, I'm not usually wearing clothes. I'm going to start trying to get more pictures of me and Moby.

I find it funny that it's January and I'm posting about Halloween. Well, I don't want these awesome pictures to go to waste. For Halloween this year Austin and I had three Halloween parties. One with my family (I don't have any pictures from this) and two different ones with different friends. The family party was awesome, as usual. Unfortunately Austin and I didn't dress up as we weren't ready yet. This is first year that I've ever NOT dressed up for the family party. Then we had a party with my "book club" friends. This party consisted of eating food, watching the boys play video games, and taking turns chasing babies. Austin, Morgan, and I dressed up in a theme. See if you can guess. If you can't tell, Austin is Han Solo, I'm Princess Leia, and Morgan is Wicket (an Ewok). My costume was very last minute. I couldn't find any Princess Leia costumes that weren't ridiculously priced, so we thrift-stored it. The skirt and turtle...

I have been blogging. I just haven't been posting my entries. Maybe I'll post them, but probably not. Most are too depressing to read. Anyway, I'm getting caught up. Troy & Jen came to town in October to attend a sealing. While they were here, the family went to Cornbelly's together. It was a lot of fun. It was interesting having Morgan with us as it was at Cornbelly's the previous year that we announced our pregnancy. It was Troy & Jen's first time meeting Morgan. A good time was had by all. And now for pictures:

So I've been a mom for two whole months now. Eight weeks ago I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy...and my entire life changed forever. I can definitely say it hasn't been easy. It's the most challenging thing I've ever done. Sometimes it's so difficult I wonder if it was a such a good idea. Do I love being a mom? Not entirely. Not yet. But I think I eventually will. Once I start sleeping on a more regular basis and I adjust to changing every single thing I do. You know the things you take for granted before you have a kid? You know, like the little things. Taking a shower, going to the bathroom, eating, sleeping, basically the every day tasks that you don't even think about before. They are all about a million times more difficult with an infant. And those are just your basic living tasks. That doesn't take into account cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, working, exercising, getting dressed and ready, or having a social life. (Not to mention having ju...

Morgan Danger Being a new mom is difficult and time consuming. I've been meaning to write this for a while now, but I've been having trouble finding the time to do so. For those that haven't heard my birth story, here it is: My last few weeks of pregnancy I'd been having Braxton-Hicks contractions on and off. My due date came and went with still no real sign of going into labor. Because things didn't go exactly as we planned with the condo we were trying to buy, Austin and I decided we needed to have a backup plan. So on Tuesday June 16th we went with Justin, our agent and brother-in-law, to look at other condos. While we were out with him, I started having contractions. Nothing regular or serious but definitely different from the Braxton-Hicks contractions. I called my mom and my doula when we got home from house hunting (which was around 8pm) to let them know I was in early labor. My mom predicted I'd have the baby by the next morning. If only. It was ar...